Pacers Hire Nate Bjorkgren as Head Coach

[Pacersike]

Yiha, modern Nate

I am a strong believer of old school Nate having all the necessary capabilities of leading Lebron and AD to a title though.

In the grand scheme of things, players make the biggest differences, so I would have been very glad no matter which candidate would have said the best things to Kevin and his team.

I'm very confident in good things to come though with this coach.

Let us also recognize that no one had this hire, or even had him listed as a favorite or a finalist.

Agreed. This again demonstrates that all these "insiders", whether it be ESPN, Hoop Collective, FakeGM's, or whoever have no inside info on the Pacers. They just use dartboards. Remember the Paul George/Oladipo/Sabonis trade came out of nowhere too.

Kevin Pritchard runs a tight ship.

Props to the entire team for barely leaking inside information.

[Scoot McGroot]

Read on Twitter

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Points out how Bjorkgren helped make the Gasol/Ibaka pairing succeed in Toronto, and that Nate seems to give the impression that he can make Sabonis/Turner work.

[Scoot McGroot]

Read on Twitter

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[Pacersike]

Points out how Bjorkgren helped make the Gasol/Ibaka pairing succeed in Toronto, and that Nate seems to give the impression that he can make Sabonis/Turner work.

O brother, good for him that he is confident, but no person can make it work if Sabonis and Turner aren't a good fit together.

4 different players, previous success means close to zero chance on future success.

Time will tell if it will work. I very much hope so, but this season will be the season they are running out of excuses if it doesn't work well enough.

Which I think will be the case, good but not good enough for playoffs success.

Same story for Brogdon and Oladipo. Brogdon plays best as SG. Old school Nate knew this as he preferred a faster point guard.

He got fired and Pritchard is allowed to make more mistakes. Fine by me, I don't want another GM, but KP clearly wants to be right about Turner and Sabonis winning playoffs games together. A candidate head coach feeling otherwise, I doubt he had a reasonable chance to get the job.

No problem, take 4, if it works, awesome. If it doesn't work well enough, changes coming in stead of excuses, also awesome.

[Wizop]

https://fieldhousefiles.substack.com/p/pacers-complete-extensive-search?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy

[Wizop]

https://www.indycornrows.com/2020/10/20/21525166/why-nate-bjorkgrens-flexible-coaching-style-fits-a-pacers-team-in-flux

[basketballwacko2]

Read on Twitter

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I know nothing about this guy.

[Ballerhogger]

Thats a good hire

[fbalmeida]

This is an excellent hire for the Pacers and I think it is a reflection that there is a solid modicum of good judgement in the Pacers front office.

I honestly think Bjorkgren will provide just about everything you could desire from a head coach: winning experience at multiple levels, deft at handling players expectations and locker room egos, and he shares Nurse's creative spark and mastery of in-game adjustments.

He'll delight the beat reporters telling stories of 15 point 4th quarter comebacks with the Bakersfield Jam.

Couldn't be happier for both you guys and Nate, that they've gone with a new guy who has worked his but off and shown he can win, instead of recycling a failed brand name coach.

[NinjaBro]

Watch on YouTube

This is a good hire. First 10 mins of the video talks about Nate Bjorkgren and the Pacers from the Raptors beat reporters point of view. Talks about how Nate grinded his way up and spent his time in Nick Nurse's basement thinking about random in game scenarios. This guy has been Nick Nurse's right hand man who has played for Nurse (both from Iowa). Seems like a Nick Nurse clone.

[Topofthekey]

Past tense of grind is ground, not grinded

Yes, this is probably my old man yelling at the sky moment

[Grang33r]

I also really like this. Not a retread guy. Seems innovative and interesting at the very least. Excited to see how this plays out. One caveat here might be the reluctance of the guys on the team to buy into a no-name assistant as opposed to Lue, Chauncey, etc. who are familiar names around the league.

I think this is the popular opinion, but i wanted to chine in and agree as well. When Nate was fired, i feared they would go the promote an assistant or hire a retread. I will admit, the thought of D'Antoni was kind of cool but only based on the name brand but that hire had lots of questions as well with fit and personal.

The coach profile that Bjorkgen has is exactly what i was hoping for, except i didn't have him on my radar. The guys i was pulling for most were Craig from the Heat and Finch from the Pelicans.

There's lots to be excited for with Bjorkgen. Has known Nick Nurse for 30 years. I read somewhere Toronto was ranked 6th and 11th in the NBA in 3PT attempts under Nurse/Bjorkgen, that should be a indication of things to come for us.

[RaptorPride]

Points out how Bjorkgren helped make the Gasol/Ibaka pairing succeed in Toronto, and that Nate seems to give the impression that he can make Sabonis/Turner work.

O brother, good for him that he is confident, but no person can make it work if Sabonis and Turner aren't a good fit together.

4 different players, previous success means close to zero chance on future success.

Time will tell if it will work. I very much hope so, but this season will be the season they are running out of excuses if it doesn't work well enough.

Which I think will be the case, good but not good enough for playoffs success.

Same story for Brogdon and Oladipo. Brogdon plays best as SG. Old school Nate knew this as he preferred a faster point guard.

He got fired and Pritchard is allowed to make more mistakes. Fine by me, I don't want another GM, but KP clearly wants to be right about Turner and Sabonis winning playoffs games together. A candidate head coach feeling otherwise, I doubt he had a reasonable chance to get the job.

No problem, take 4, if it works, awesome. If it doesn't work well enough, changes coming in stead of excuses, also awesome.

They have known each other for almost 30 years.

https://www.thetelegram.com/sports/basketball/nurse-loses-right-hand-man-as-bjorkgren-takes-over-in-indiana-511601/

The Nurse/Bjorkgren relationship goes all the way back to 1993 when Nurse was an assistant coach at the University of South Dakota and Bjorkgren was a freshman point guard on the team.

Fourteen years later the two worked side by side, Nurse as head coach and Bjorkgren moving from an unpaid volunteer assistant to a paid assistant a year later with the Iowa Energy of the NBA’s D-League in 2007.

When Nurse became head coach in Toronto in 2018 he brought Bjorkgren on to his staff after the latter had spent a few years with the Phoenix Suns. That year the Raptors won their first NBA title.

Having travelled the route Nurse did to get to the NBA — years in the British Basketball League followed by years coaching in the D-League and just about everywhere else before he got his chance — it’s not a surprise that the Raptors head coach has gone out of his way to promote members of his own staff every chance he gets.

Bjorkgren’s departure, though, is going to remove not just a good coach and great developer of talent from Toronto’s staff, but a guy Nurse would lean on when any doubts would start to creep in.

[Mattatron]

Yessir! Congrats to the Pacers and Nate Björkgren! Excellent choice, he's really a positive and innovative guy, I think he match up really well with this environment.

[boomershadow]

Does this seem like hiring Frank Vogel again lol.

[Scoot McGroot]

Does this seem like hiring Frank Vogel again lol.

Not really, unless you narrow it down to just Frank and Bjorkgren are new school and McMillan, Bird,
Etc are told school

Otherwise, young and positive sure, but one was an internal promotion that held on after a midseason firing and was never supposed to get the job to begin with, while the other is the target after a long and exhaustive outside search.

[Scoot McGroot]

Bjorkgren’s intro press conference will be at 11am eastern today (one hour from this posting). You can view it in the Pacers app. Probably on the website too.

[boomershadow]

Does this seem like hiring Frank Vogel again lol.

Not really, unless you narrow it down to just Frank and Bjorkgren are new school and McMillan, Bird,
Etc are told school

Otherwise, young and positive sure, but one was an internal promotion that held on after a midseason firing and was never supposed to get the job to begin with, while the other is the target after a long and exhaustive outside search.

Basically that they are both younger first time coaches that got into coaching basketball because they are passionate about it even though they werent like a legacy or a former pro player. They broke into the game through hard work, confidence, positivity, and connecting with their players. It "feels" very similar to me.

Frank, at least in he beginning, was pretty old school in his style of play even though he was never a traditional hard-ass type.

[Scoot McGroot]

Does this seem like hiring Frank Vogel again lol.

Not really, unless you narrow it down to just Frank and Bjorkgren are new school and McMillan, Bird,
Etc are told school

Otherwise, young and positive sure, but one was an internal promotion that held on after a midseason firing and was never supposed to get the job to begin with, while the other is the target after a long and exhaustive outside search.

Basically that they are both younger first time coaches that got into coaching basketball because they are passionate about it even though they werent like a legacy or a former pro player. They broke into the game through hard work, confidence, positivity, and connecting with their players. It "feels" very similar to me.

Frank, at least in he beginning, was pretty old school in his style of play even though he was never a traditional hard-ass type.

Oh, I guess then, sure.

[Tom White]

If anyone is interested, Bjorkgren's introductory press conference is/was today at 11:00AM. So it is either already on the Pacers website, or should be shortly.